Stoney Beck

by Jean Houghton-Beatty

  Mr. Pudsley scratched his beard and stared upwards at the ceiling. Then, as if he’d seen the answer written there, turned back to Jenny. “There’s a priest at St. Mary’s Church in Daytonwater goes by the name of Woodleigh. It’s the next village over, nine or ten miles to the east of here. Don’t know his first name though. Never been inside his church. I’m Church of England y’see. Not that I go much. Running a place like this doesn’t give you much time to yourself.”

  “I understand. Anyway, I doubt it’s the same Woodleigh. Thanks again for the tea. It was delicious.”

  She ran her finger under the collar of her blouse as she headed for the door and out of the inn, then undid the top button to relieve the sudden tightness. A priest, for heaven’s sake. The word swished around in her brain making a rhyme. A priest, a priest, nine or ten miles to the east.

  She crossed the road and leaned against a tree, then reached in her shoulder bag and pulled out the slim volume of poems. She flipped through the pages to “How Do I Love Thee,” where the picture was lodged. It was easy to see why her mother had fallen for this guy. He had a sexy smile and bedroom eyes, and looked no more like a priest than Jenny did a nun. Her mother, sheltered minister’s daughter that she was, maybe wouldn’t have recognized good-time Charlie as a smooth talker, and perhaps wouldn’t have understood the line he’d use on innocent girls, especially pretty young American college students, thousands of miles away from home. Jenny remembered her mother telling her he was older than she was by three or four years but still a student. Yeah, in a pig’s eye. Charles Woodleigh was already a priest, Jenny would bet a thousand dollars. Wouldn’t that be the very reason he’d disappeared, without even a forwarding address? He’d probably taken the next train out of there, back to his parish, worried sick she’d come back to tell him she was pregnant.

  Jenny stuffed the book back in her purse and as she headed down Market Street tried to turn her stiff, tense stride into something resembling a stroll. She stopped to stare at the shingle outside the large house. Dr. Jonathon T. Hall, General Practitioner, the sign said. Was this the doctor who had delivered her? She traced her fingers over the latticed grillwork of the iron gate as she pictured her mother, alone and frightened opening the gate and trudging up the path to the door. Jenny’s own trembling hand was on the latch, ready to open the gate, when she saw the sign in the bay window. Surgery - 9:30 - 11:00 AM and 5:30 - 7:00 PM weekdays. 9:30 - 11:00 AM Saturday only. No surgery on Sunday. There was a number to call for emergencies. She pondered over the word surgery until she remembered an English movie she’d seen ages ago. Surgery in England didn’t necessarily mean an operation. It was also the name of the doctor’s office. She looked at her watch. Twenty after five. She would come another time.

  On down the street, she sauntered past the row of houses, all with names as well as numbers. There was Rose Cottage, The Hollies, Squirrel Lodge, Hawthorne House, even Molly and Me. While she debated whether to go inside the Knitting Needles Yarn Shop to let them know their cat was in the window playing with a ball of yarn, a woman thrust her hand through the curtain and yanked the cat out. She smiled at Jenny then disappeared.

  At the post office on the corner of Vallhellyn Lane, she crossed Market Street to Hallveck Common, and slowly walked up one of the four pink gravel paths which led from each corner of the common to the obelisk in the center. In memory of those who died on foreign soil during the two Great Wars, 1914-1918 and 1939-1945 the inscription read. Three Japanese tourists posed in front of the memorial while a fourth was about to take their picture.

  “Please, please,” one of the three called to her, pointing to the camera, and gesturing to their friend.

  “Why sure,” Jenny said, as the young man handed her the camera. After explaining how it worked, he joined the other three and Jenny clicked the shutter.

  She smiled as she returned their camera, then climbed the steep hill called Coppers Brow to Ferguson’s Garage. Pete, sentinel like, sat upright beside the desk.

  “Hi Pete,” she said, giving him a rub behind his ears.

  Pete’s tail began to swish slowly from side to side.

  “You’re taking a chance with that dog,” Andy Ferguson said as he strolled toward her. “He’s vicious when he’s on guard. Any second now and he’ll go for your throat. Come on boy, show her your teeth.”

  Pete’s tail picked up speed as he laughed up at his master.

  Andy wiped his hands on an oily rag. “How do you like the inn?”

  “It’s all I hoped for and then some. And now, if you’ll show me your rental cars.”

  “Ah yes, the cars. You know, I should have asked you when we drove in, but didn’t think about it. Have you driven in England before?”

  “Never. Don’t forget I only arrived in London a week ago. This is my first visit to England.” She studied her shoes as she mulled over her response. It hadn’t occurred to her before but this wasn’t her first visit. She’d been born here.

  Andy looked from the car back to her. “Well, it’ll be tricky. Opposite side of the road, steering wheel on the right, and—”

  “Ah, that won’t bother me,” she interrupted. “I’ve been driving all over North and South Carolina since I was sixteen. Never even put a dent in a car.”

  “Can you handle gears or did you drive an automatic?”

  “Automatic, but the first car I ever had was stick.”

  He looked to the left where his cars were parked. “There’s a Ford Escort over there you can use, the blue one on the end.”

  “Great.” She pulled her credit card from her wallet and handed it to him. “Would it be too much of an imposition to ask you to come for a ten-minute drive? It isn’t just that y’all drive on the wrong side, it’s—”

  “We don’t drive on the wrong side. We drive on the opposite side, the left.”

  “Yes, well, whatever. I think I can handle that. It’s these crazy roundabouts that scare me. My uncle warned me about them.”

  “Oh, they’re not too bad. After you’ve gone around them ten or twenty times, you’ll get the hang of it.” He smiled. He had white even teeth and a half-inch scar above the left side of his lip.

  “I may drive to Daytonwater tomorrow,” Jenny said, “to St. Mary’s church. I want to get the hang of this driving on the left.”

  He lifted some keys off a nail on the wall behind them. “Give me a minute to let Alf know where I’m going. He’s my right-hand man.”

  After a few minutes spent fastening seat belts and explanations about where the lights and windshield wipers were located, they headed out of Stoney Beck.

  “You’ll like Daytonwater,” Andy said. “It’s very old and St. Mary’s is pure Gothic.”

  “Uh, huh.” Jenny focused on the road ahead, drove a steady thirty miles an hour, and tried to remember to step on the clutch every time she changed gears.

  “Take the first road on your left beyond the next farm,” he said after they’d gone about five miles. “We’ll circle back through the village. You’re good enough on the country roads.”

  Andy Ferguson watched her out of the corner of his eye. She reminded him of those American prom queens he’d seen on TV or those cheerleaders twirling their batons and flouncing around all over the place. They were all knockouts, if you liked that sort of look, always smiling and flashing their gleaming all-American teeth. Gradually, though, while Jenny concentrated on the road, Andy noticed the determined jut of her chin, the way she bit her lip as she maneuvered the car round each curve of the winding country lane. She looked strong and fragile at the same time. There was something in her air, a hint of hard times. Even when she smiled he could tell. It showed in her eyes.

  “Give yourself plenty of time tomorrow,” he said. “The road’s narrow and snakes around the fells so be careful. And don’t let this warm weather fool you. It can change up here in a heartbeat. Especially watch out for the mist. It comes from out of nowhere and if you’re not used to it, you can find yourself in troubl
e. If it happens, park your car as soon as you can and wait it out. It’s the only safe way.”

  Jenny only nodded, as she steered the car into the parking lot of the garage. She came to an easy stop and turned off the ignition.

  Andy opened the door and got out. “Hang on a minute. I’ll be right back.” He opened his van and picked up the cellular phone. “Better keep this with you. You can recharge it in the cigarette lighter. And here’s my card in case you run into trouble.”

  As Jenny drove back to the Hare and Hounds, she thought about Andy Ferguson. He was one of those rare men, a gentle man who wasn’t afraid to show it, yet at the same time losing none of his masculinity. She pushed thoughts of him aside, not about to follow in her mother’s footsteps and get tangled up with some guy who lived an ocean away. She had enough problems.

  Chapter Four

  On her way home from the Hare and Hounds, Biddy Biggerstaff at Braddocks Apothecary for medicine to quell a fever and some aspirin which helped anything. She climbed back in her dark green Toyota and headed out of the village. Her mind was riveted on that girl in the tearoom, the last person in the world Biddy had expected to see. Until the arrival of the photograph, the doctor had not received so much as a line from Beverly. Even when the photograph arrived, there was no return address on the envelope, with the postmark no more than a smudge. After all these years, she still didn’t want anyone in England to know her American address. And now, with just six weeks left to go, Biddy was almost home free, at least she’d thought so until today.

  When she’d spotted that girl in the Hare and Hounds, sitting there, bold as brass, red and black dots had danced in front of Biddy’s eyes. Now, though, as she drove slowly up Vallhellyn Lane and thought about the encounter, she began to see it differently. When she’d accused the girl of snooping around, it was obvious Biddy had startled her. She acted puzzled as if not understanding anything Biddy was saying. Was it possible Beverly hadn’t told her daughter everything, except perhaps to say she was born in Stoney Beck? That couldn’t be avoided because it would be on her birth certificate. Was that all she knew? Had Beverly fabricated lies to avoid telling her daughter the truth. Had this Jenny come innocently to Stoney Beck for a holiday like she said? And was it just coincidence she had come at this crucial time? The more Biddy thought about it, the more feasible it sounded, and the better she felt. Still, on the other hand—But Biddy couldn’t bear to think of that now.

  As she drove up Glen Ellen’s gravel drive, she gave a guarded look at the dead oak tree in the center of the front lawn. It was enormous, with a trunk at least eight feet around and half again as tall as the two-story house with its steep gabled roof. Even though the tree had been dead two years, Biddy swore it was growing still, its naked, bleached branches reaching out, stretching toward the house, toward her.

  The back door was on the side of the house and in a spot where Biddy was hidden from the tree. She parked as close to the door as she could, stepped out of the car and went inside. The house was nowhere near as clean as it used to be. Dust coated everything and cobwebs were all over the place, even hanging from the chandelier in the hallway. But Biddy didn’t care. These days visitors were almost non-existent and those who did come stayed in the kitchen.

  As gloomy and rundown as the house was, the upstairs bedroom Biddy now entered was bright and airy. A young woman sat at a card table doing a jigsaw puzzle. She had sparse straight hair, cut short, just below her ears. Her eyes behind the wire-rimmed glasses were cautious as Biddy walked toward her and held out the bottle.

  “Here’s your medicine, so you don’t need to be telephoning the doctor. I still think you’re imagining things. You’ve been like this all your life.”

  “No, this is different.” The girl had a breathless sort of voice, but that was part of her condition. Biddy was used to it. She put her hand under the girl’s chin, looked closely at the round, flat face, examined the sallow splotchy skin. “It’s just a flare up of your eczema. Nothing to worry about.”

  The girl’s lip trembled. “Ever since I had that sore throat, I’ve felt poorly. And I’m always tired.” She dropped one of the jigsaw pieces but left it where it fell. “I miss Mummy and Daddy so much. You do too, don’t you, Biddy,” she lisped, her tone pleading.

  “Oh, miss them all right,” Biddy ground out. “I miss them because there’s only you and me now. You and me twenty-four hours a day, Sarah. I gave up a good job to take care of you and now look where it’s got me.”

  Sarah picked at her nails, cringing at the look on Biddy’s face, all twisted as though she hated her. Back in the old days, when Mummy and Daddy were alive, Biddy had been nicer. Oh, not loving, not anything that special, but not mean like she was now. This last year she had started changing. She had begun talking nasty and drinking a lot. Sarah couldn’t pin down the very day she had first noticed. Maybe it was the day Biddy had talked about the tree. She had started saying the strangest things, like had Sarah noticed how it was growing still, even though it was supposed to be dead. Sarah had tried to tell Biddy that dead trees didn’t grow, but she wouldn’t listen. Then one day she had closed all the curtains on the front of the house and told Sarah not to open them ever again. These last few weeks Biddy had grown meaner than ever and Sarah didn’t know what she was going to do.

  “You’re a great big fibber, Biddy,” Sarah blurted out, wagging an accusing finger. “I heard you tell Mummy you hated that other job.”

  “Yes, well. Times have changed. I never dreamed I’d be stuck here with you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”

  Sarah’s throat tightened. Her parents had been good to Biddy and would have been very hurt to hear her talk like this. Sarah spread her arms wide. “You’ve got me and this nice big house. You can stay here all safe and warm for the rest of your life.”

  Biddy glared at her. “I’ve got you and this nice big house,” she said, mimicking Sarah’s lisp. “You’re too stupid to understand I might not want you for the rest of my life. Still, you never know. I might get lucky yet. Everyone knows mongoloids don’t live as long as normal people.”

  “Please, Biddy, don’t say mongoloid. You know how Mummy hated that word. It’s Down syndrome. She was so proud of me. And so was Daddy. Remember what he called me? His little Angel?”

  “Ha! Some angel. There’s nothing little about you. But you’ll die young, Sarah Fitzgerald. Then the house will be mine. All mine.”

  Sarah’s stomach churned. She put a hand over her mouth and stumbled through the door to the bathroom.

  Biddy stood, arms folded and watched her go and thought about the night she had listened outside Fred and Edna Fitzgerald’s bedroom door and heard them making plans for the unexpected. But who could have foretold then that two healthy people in their early fifties would get killed trying to avoid a goat on a lonely mountain road in the Pyrenees. They had gone to Lourdes every year to try to get the Virgin Mary to perform a miracle on Sarah. The only miracle that had come out of the whole thing was a dubious one as far as Biddy was concerned. Sarah hadn’t been killed with them. She had survived without a scratch.

  Edna and Fred had been dead for almost two years. The long wait was almost over, and if Biddy played her cards right, in a few short weeks she would be a rich woman. Sarah was the snag of course. Thanks to the marvels of modern medicine, her kind were living longer than ever. Still, Biddy was not too worried. After everything was finally settled, she could easily get rid of Sarah. With a little diplomacy, it should be easy enough to convince the Social Services that the girl would be better off in a home, a place for those with special needs. If that didn’t work, well, there were other ways. And once Sarah was out of the way, Biddy would get it all. She’d sell the house and Stoney Beck and everybody in it wouldn’t see her for dust.

  A sudden vision of the American girl in the tearoom flashed in front of Biddy. Was it possible the girl somehow had found out about the clause in the will. Was this why she had suddenly materialized? Bid
dy shook her head, remembering again the girl’s puzzled, confused look. There was no way the girl could have found out. Even Beverly herself couldn’t have known. Just weeks after the birth, she had her baby and disappeared off the face of the earth. The Fitzgeralds had tried everything to find them but the search had been futile. That was almost a quarter of a century ago. That girl coming to Stoney Beck at this critical time was nothing more than a coincidence. Biddy told herself her jitters were understandable because in just a few weeks everything she had waited for these long years through would at last be hers. It had all been worth it. And yet, she would feel a lot easier when that girl left the village, and the sooner, the better.

  The sound of the flushing toilet jerked Biddy back to the present. She had to be careful, keep her wits about her. If Dr. Hall asked Sarah how Biddy treated her, the stupid girl would tell. It wouldn’t occur to her to lie and Biddy had waited too long to bugger it up now. She dredged up a caring smile and limped into the bathroom.

  “Come on, Sarah, Biddy was only kidding. When my arthritics are acting up, I get cranky. You know I didn’t mean it.” She leaned against the bathroom wall while Sarah rinsed her mouth, then brushed her teeth. “The only reason I stay is to take care of you. Do you remember what I said would happen if I left?”

  Sarah’s round eyes grew wider, more frightened. “The men in the white coats would come for me with their paddy wagon and carry me off.”

  “That’s right. So don’t you go saying anything bad about old Biddy will you?’

  “I wouldn’t do that. You know I wouldn’t.”

  “That’s a good girl because those men in the white coats are mean as snakes. They’d lock you in a big dark room with bars on the windows and never let you out.”

  Sarah grabbed hold of Biddy’s arm. “I’m not that bad am I, Biddy? I know I’m slow, but don’t I help you clean the house? I can read and write, and I’ve even got a job. I can do nearly everything anybody else can do.”